


They Assume

by Satori



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Friendship, Gen, Honestly Just Friends, Just Friends, Spies & Secret Agents
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-06
Updated: 2013-01-06
Packaged: 2017-11-23 21:15:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,285
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/626593
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Satori/pseuds/Satori
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>People assume a lot of things about Natasha Romanova.  With a name like The Black Widow, it's more or less inevitable.  She seems to ignore all their glances and prejudices with ease.  Clint's not so happy about what people think of her - or of his relationship to her.</p>
            </blockquote>





	They Assume

     He had come to the conclusion that Natasha actually liked it when people made entirely wrong assumptions about her. It was an odd thing to revel in.  
  
     At first he assumed that she simply didn't care to disabuse others of their notions - that correcting misapprehensions would involve caring too much about what other people thought of her. She was the Black Widow, what did she care for the opinion of lesser beings? But after missions together, after bleeding out on a side street in Pretoria as she pressed down on him and screamed for evac, after carrying her unconscious body out of the fire in Prague, he knew her better than that. He'd been in the military, however briefly that had lasted, and knew the pride of soldier. She'd been molded into an assassin from childhood, and was taught to be ever wary the harsh and unforgiving way. Natasha never looked down on anyone. She knew all too well how fatal that could be.  
  
     His next working theory was that it was born of ingrained habit. But after she'd reach out for his arm, wordlessly asking him to stay with her that night in Brussels, after he'd seen that brief but telling flicker in her expression outside that orphanage in Kiev; after all that, he couldn't see her taking pleasure in taking on a role for the purpose of playing other people and gaining the advantage of superior knowledge. Oh, Natasha was good at manipulating people, perhaps even enjoyed the emotional thrill of challenging someone to battle on a field of mind and spirit. Natasha did not enjoy manipulating, mutating, masking herself. She did not, could not take joy in the crafting of a stranger who wore her face and skin and smile. Natasha revealed little, rarely gave a straight answer, and let others assume. But it wasn't the trained spy in her that insisted she do so - she did it for herself.  
  
     He never considered the idea that she was still working, still being the Widow, even when she seemed to relax. She was good enough an actor to fool him, probably, but you can't fake sacrifice, and after all she's bled, all the stupid reckless things she's done for him and others, he can't doubt her.  
  
     He finally understands while they are enjoying some downtime in a Hong Kong hotel suite - it's nice to be able to get classic American movies in quality, and Natasha is shamelessly indulging in her Audrey Hepburn addiction. The Black Widow is all about image - the Ingenue or the Seductress when the mission is infiltration, the Ruthless Killer or Inescapable Wraith when it's more blunt. Either way, she depends as much on the legend of the Black Widow, the larger than life reputation that kindles fear and desire and inevitable surrender in the hearts of men. She cultivates it with a thousand little touches, every detail carefully calculated. Natasha, when she shucks the clothes and the myth, wants to live without having to care about what other people think. She refuses to play a role outside of those she is assigned to.  
  
     It's not that people misread her, he has discovered, it's that she doesn't have to correct them. Even he can revel in that, in how she is free from the mission and the mold that she had once been poured into. She is who she wants to be, and she doesn't have to answer to anyone for it.

* * *

  
     And besides, it is genuinely funny, sometimes, what some people assume about them. They talk about him capturing the famous Black Widow, or even, God help him, rescuing her. They look at him with envy or awe, imagining that he's bedding that glamorous creature of sensual curves and killer glances. The ideas in their heads are sometimes so fantastical that he can't help but want to laugh.  
  
     Despite the cliché about which head men think with, Clint's most finely honed tool is not his bow or his body but his mind. He has to take in a scene, assess it, and react, all within a blink of an eye - unless he wants the other guy to get the first shot off. He has to consider the sum total of an environment -weather, sight lines, escape routes, cover - before making his perch and letting loose. So he learns to analyze things carefully. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to spot the implications of a name like Black Widow. It's probably inevitable that a red-blooded male seeing Natasha Romanova thinks "I'd tap that." Anyone with a sense of self-preservation who sees the Black Widow, however, recognizes first and foremost that this is a deadly, deadly apex predator. Clint isn't the sort who thinks that danger is a turn-on - he risks his life enough at work, thank you.  
  
     They've 'slept' together, to be sure, but not in that way. Holding her as she wept or dreamt nightmares or whimpered in pain certainly did not arouse that sort of feeling in him - nor would he ever do anything to diminish that trust. Someday, if Natasha decides that she can expand that trust further, he may allow himself to consider. . . a different sort of relationship. But he's not willing to settle for just part of Natasha Romonova, in that intimate context. And he wants no part of the hollow legend that is the Widow.  
  
     The idea that he 'captured' her is ridiculous. Natasha can kick his ass drunk and handcuffed to an office chair. She was trained to kill men twice her size and thrice her weight from childhood. He was primarily trained to shoot things at a distance. In close combat, she'd have demolished him. He out-massed her, enough that he might have overpowered her in a clinch, but he'd have died long before he could subdue her if he'd somehow gotten that close - Natasha was never without just one more hidden knife, and was not shy about using poisons. Instead, he'd talked to her, empathized with her, offered her the way out he hadn't been able to see either from the middle of his own mess. He's still not entirely sure why she accepted. He thinks she was just tired.  
  
     And as for rescue. . . If there's one thing Natasha has never needed, it's a hero on a white horse. He was tired himself when he choose to make that offer to her. He thinks, sometimes, that he was almost looking forward to her saying no.  She’s always been stronger than him, because she was made to be, by fire and insolation and the knife.  He's always relied on people - on his brother, on his mentor, on Coulson. She's gone it alone, and rebuilt herself after being remade in an image not her own. He gives her what solace and sympathy he can, but he knows he can't truly understand the depth of what she's suffered.  
  
     Considering it all, Clint still dislikes it, a little, that people look at him and Natasha and assume. He doesn't like that she seems to be diminished by his presence by her side. But she seems to see it quite differently, so he puts up with it gladly. 

* * *

  
      The truth is, Natasha finds it reassuring that people think Clint is so tied to her, that their stories are so intertwined. If they talk about her being rescued, they must believe that she can be saved. If they gossip about her love life, they must believe that she might be worth loving. And anyway, who is to say he didn't capture her? The only bonds that have ever held her, longer than she wished, anyway, were forged of things intangible, and yet infinitely stronger than mere metal.

**Author's Note:**

> This fic started with me getting annoyed at so many Clintasha fics having Clint bring Natasha in by force - in close combat no less. Sorry, but Hawkeye vs Widow in melee can really have only one outcome. He loses. How it turned into this... I have no idea.


End file.
